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HOLOCAUSTO CANIBAL
Cannibal Holocaust is a 1979 Italian horror film directed by Ruggero Deodato from a screenplay by Gianfranco Clerici. Filmed in the Amazon Rainforest and dealing with indigenous tribes, it was cast mostly with United States actors and filmed in English to achieve wider distribution. Francesca Ciardi and Luca Barbareschi were among the leads as native Italian speakers to qualify the film as European for distribution on the Continent. Cannibal Holocaust achieved notability because its graphic violence aroused a great deal of controversy. After its premiere in Italy, it was seized by a local magistrate, and Deodato was arrested on obscenity charges. He was charged with making a snuff film, due to rumors that some actors were killed on camera. Although Deodato was later cleared, the film was banned in Italy, the UK, Australia, and several other countries due to its graphic depiction of violence, sexual violence, and the slaughter of seven animals. Some nations have since revoked the ban, but the film is still barred in several countries. The critic David Carter suggests the film is a commentary about civilized society. Filmed in the Amazon, the film tells the story of the search for a documentary film crew who had gone to film indigenous tribes and been missing for two months. A second team, headed by the New York anthropologist Harold Monroe, recovers their lost cans of film and learns their fate. Much of the film is the portrayal of the recovered films' content; the sections of "documentary" film function similarly to a flashback and grows increasingly disturbing as the film progresses. The film opens with a television documentary about a missing United States film crew, who disappeared on an expedition to the Amazon Basin to make a documentary about indigenous cannibal tribes. The team was Alan Yates (Carl Gabriel Yorke), the director; Faye Daniels (Francesca Ciardi), his girlfriend and script girl; and two cameramen, Jack Anders (Perry Pirkanen) and Mark Tomaso (Luca Barbareschi). Harold Monroe (Robert Kerman), a New York University anthropologist, has agreed to lead a rescue team and flies to the Amazon to meet his guides, Chaco and his assistant Miguel. The group has a Yacumo hostage captured by the military, and is used to help them negotiate with the natives. The team arranges his release in exchange for being taken to the Yacumo village. There the team meets hostility and learn that the film group had caused great unrest among the people. The next day, Monroe and his guides head deeper into the rainforest to locate two warring tribes, the Ya̧nomamö and the Shamatari. Following a group of Shamatari warriors to a riverbank, they intervene and save a smaller group of Ya̧nomamö from death in a conflict between the groups. The Ya̧nomamö invite Monroe and his team back to their village, where they are treated with suspicion. To gain the villagers' trust, Monroe bathes naked in a river. A group of Ya̧nomamö women who watched him take him to a shrine, which he learns holds the bones of the missing American filmmakers. Monroe confronts the Ya̧nomamö about this. After playing a tape recorder for them, he trades it for the first team’s surviving reels of film. Back in New York, executives of the Pan American Broadcast Company invite Monroe to host a broadcast of a documentary to be made from the recovered film. Monroe wants to see the raw footage first. The execs introduce him to Yates' work by showing an excerpt from his previous documentary, The Last Road to Hell. One of the executives tells Monroe that Yates staged a scene to get more exciting footage. Monroe reviews the footage, which the audience sees "along" with him. The first reel follows the group’s trek through the jungle. They promptly spot a large turtle which they proceed to kill and eat. Their guide, Felipe, is bitten by a venomous snake. The group amputates Felipe's leg with a machete in an attempt to save his life, but he quickly dies and is left behind. The remaining four succeed in locating the Yacumo. Jack shoots one in the leg so they can easily follow him to the village. The second reel starts with the group’s arrival at the Yacumo village. They force the entire tribe into a hut and burn it down in order to stage a scene for the film. Monroe expresses concerns over the staged scenes and unethical treatment of the natives, but his worries are ignored. Monroe expresses his disgust to station executives about their decision to air the documentary. To convince them of his view, he shows the remaining, unedited footage. The final two reels begin with the team locating a young Ya̧nomamö girl, whom the men gang-rape as Faye tries to stop them. Later the team film the girl impaled on a wooden pole. They claim the natives killed her due to an “obscure sexual rite.” After they move on, the Ya̧nomamö attack the team in revenge for the girl’s rape and death. Jack is hit by a spear, and Alan shoots him so the team can film how the natives treat his corpse, after which they cannibalize it. Following this, Alan tells the camera that they have lost their maps and medical supplies and are trapped. He attempts to scare off the natives by shooting a flare gun. As the three try to escape, Faye is captured. Alan insists they try to rescue her. Mark continues to film as she is raped and beheaded. The Ya̧nomamö locate the last two where they are hiding. As the camera falls to the ground, the reel ends showing Alan’s bloody face. The executives order the footage destroyed. However, the epilogue informs us that the projectionist smuggled out the reels, which he later sold for $250,000. As Monroe leaves the station, he laments, "I wonder who the real cannibals are." Cast *Robert Kerman as Harold Monroe *Carl Gabriel Yorke as Alan Yates *Francesca Ciardi as Faye Daniels *Perry Pirkanen as Jack Anders *Luca Barbareschi as Mark Tomaso